With less than 100 days until the election, Democrats are finding a surprising amount of traction by attacking the GOP’s record on women — and Republicans, thus far, are having trouble responding.
Abortion. In vitro fertilization. Even a — to use the Democratic Party’s word — “weird” wrath for “childless cat ladies.” Polling backs up what Democrats are seeing: a significant shift in the presidential race toward Kamala Harris now that she is the nominee, particularly with women.
Recent polling shows women breaking for Harris by 16 percentage points over former President Donald Trump. That’s markedly better than her former running mate, Joe Biden, who ran neck and neck with Trump with women.
The problem for the GOP is not an easy one to solve. They have espoused policies for decades that women oppose, and their messaging on those issues — and women in general — isn’t helping.
To hear Democrats tell it, Republicans are obsessed with regulating women’s reproduction and hold unpopular opinions about women having children. And now, Democrats are doing all they can to make the GOP’s long-standing problem with women another self-fulfilling prophecy in 2024.
“Since Kamala Harris has become a presumptive nominee, the abortion issue is back front and center,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told reporters on Tuesday.
Warren took particular aim at her Senate colleague, vice presidential candidate JD Vance of Ohio, predicting that Vance’s “attitudes toward women are so outside the mainstream that many women will turn their back on that whole ticket.”
The Vance problem is only made worse because he’s a senator. The Democrat-controlled Senate has been ground zero for putting Republicans on the record about certain unpopular political positions this election cycle. And Vance, as Trump’s vice presidential nominee, has given Democrats a way to connect the uncomfortable votes they’ve forced on Republicans this Congress to Trump and the presidential race.
(Not to mention, Vance himself has willingly given Democrats plenty of fodder for the war on women narrative in podcast interviews, fundraising emails and other public statements.)
Democrats find themselves with an embarrassment of riches to further the narrative that Republicans are adversarial to women. And Republicans are suddenly wondering how they can bring women back to their corner and undermine the opposition’s narrative.
For Sen. Cynthia Lummis, it’s about turning the tables on Democrats. She wants her Republican colleagues to appeal to a GOP base fervently opposed to abortion.
“What my side of the aisle needs to do is encourage the media to ask Democrats: ‘So what’s your limit on abortion? Is it birth? Is it two weeks before birth? Do you have no limits on abortion?’” Lummis told NOTUS on Tuesday.
If you ask Republicans how they can repair their reputations with women, the magnitude of the problem becomes clearer. GOP lawmakers are all over the place in their answers — and their messaging is as imprecise as it is broad.
Without a hint of irony, Sen. Tommy Tuberville — perhaps best known on Capitol Hill for putting a monthslong hold on hundreds of military promotions in the name of blocking abortion funding — emphasized that Republicans should underscore that women have choices on how to build their families.
“The message to women is: We’re all for nuclear family, but we’re also, if you don’t want to have kids, fine, I mean, it’s up to you,” Tuberville said. “As a human being, everybody gets to make their own decisions in this country.”
As for Tuberville himself, he is “for family 100%.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito — a member of Republican leadership — told NOTUS that Republicans should highlight “economic security and national security, where you feel like you have a brighter future for you and your family.”
But Capito acknowledged that Republicans have struggled to make that case to voters effectively.
“We got a lot of work to do,” she said. “I think we can do better.”
Capito isn’t the only Republican wringing her hands that the GOP isn’t landing its message to women, especially now that Harris tops the Democratic ticket. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion access has animated voters to support Democratic candidates and ballot measures — including in red states like Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski — a moderate Republican with a record of bucking top GOP brass on abortion — put the Republican challenge with women in stark terms.
“Republicans muddled the message, and it’s going to be hard for them,” Murkowski told NOTUS. “And if you don’t think the Democrats see that and have seized on it, you’re not looking at what they’re all running on, everyone from Harris on down the ticket.”
Part of the problem for Republicans is that abortion access is widely popular. A 2024 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 63% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in “all or most cases.” IVF is even more favored. A February memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and shared with GOP Senate candidates included polling by GOP operative Kellyanne Conway that showed 86% of women support “increasing access to fertility-related procedures and services.”
Vance’s comment about childless women also won’t go anywhere if Democrats have anything to do with it.
Even Republicans like Murkowski, Sen. Thom Tillis and Sen. Josh Hawley have called his 2021 remark — and his recent double down — as “offensive,” “inappropriate” and a “poor choice of words,” respectively.
Still, Hawley told NOTUS that Republicans have an opening to connect with women and reorient the conversation in their favor by focusing on the economy. He’s been a rare Republican to vocally support the child tax credit for just that reason.
“I think our message ought to be, ‘We want to help you start a family. We want to give you control over raising your own family,’” Hawley said.
But as for whether his party has delivered that message, Hawley was less certain.
“We’ll see,” he said.
In the face of relentless Democratic taunts, Republicans do have another option. They can blow off the issues of abortion, birth control, IVF and childless cat ladies entirely. As Sen. John Kennedy put it to NOTUS, in his eyes, those issues won’t decide the election anyway.
“I think it’ll wind up being decided on the economy, a big part of which is inflation,” Kennedy said. “It’ll be decided on the border and what people think the sensible approach is there.”
“It will be decided on crime,” Kennedy continued. “And it will be decided on national security.”
But ignoring the problem and trying to redirect the conversation seems to be a strategy Democrats hope Republicans go for.
As Warren said Tuesday, with Harris as the Democratic nominee, the contrast between Democrats and Republicans on abortion is “at the heart of the 2024 election.”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.